Search tag: "megatron"

I got United Tank Megatron shipped to me along with my Windcharger/Wipe-Out, but the deluge of Prime toys that happened shortly thereafter kept me from talking about him until now. Priorities, man!

I got Tank Megatron for a few reasons. First, I've never owned the Classics-era Deluxe tank Megatron toy. They kept on redecoing him as Megatron, and I didn't need another Megatron. So this was a new toy to me.

Secondly, on the tail of the first reason, a character who isn't Megatron shares these colors. Late in Generation 2 there was a "Hero" Megatron toy that was purple and blue and orange in black camo. I own it, in fact! ...even though it's broken in places and missing some accessories. It was one of my first BotCon purchases. But in Europe, that toy was released as a different guy called Archforce. All they did was modify the sticker on the underside of his chest that said "MEGATRON RULES" to say nothing at all. (I love that sticker, by the way.) This new Tank Megatron doesn't have any "MEGATRON RULES" on him, so that says Archforce to me! Sweet, an Archforce toy.

And most importantly, the thing just looks damn pretty.

Reviews of the toy were not very favorable, so I knew I wasn't getting a spectacular figure. He's not bad or terrible. He's sort of in the middle there. Most people seemed to hate that Megatron didn't have two proper hands. His cannon arm was actually a gimmicked propeller-spinning thing, commonly called a "rotate blade." You fold out his cannon in front of his wrist and press a lever on the arm, causing the thing to spin. There's no hand on that arm, so folks got annoyed. I've got plenty of Megatrons with two hands, and my mental picture of Archforce doesn't demand a number of hands, so the gimmick doesn't bother me. Besides, I love rotate blades.

He's a pretty toy who I can easily repurpose as an obscure dude I don't own. I should probably throw a G2 symbol sticker on him.

It's another year of Transformers and Halls and Fames! And yet again, there's a Beast Wars guy in the fan-selected nominees! I'm gung ho for 2010's Dinobot and I enjoy 2011's Waspinator, but I have to tell you, Beast Wars Megatron is genuinely my favorite Transformers character of all time. And once Hasbro let us know that even though they auto-inducted "Megatron" for the first year of the Hall of Fame, it didn't mean we couldn't fan-nominate the young upstart who took his name, traveled into Earth's past, and blew off Optimus Prime's head!

So I'm voting BW Megs. There won't be a storyline or anything pushing for him this year like I did for Dinobot, but I just thought I'd let you know the voting has begun.

I tell you what, I did not care a lot about Megatron's new stealth bomber body when it was introduced in IDW's first ongoing Transformers title. I mean, I didn't hate it. It just kind of existed. It was undoubtedly a thing, just not a thing I gave a lot of thought about. And it had a big M on his forehead, which I'm not sure if I love or hate for its goofiness.

But then Hasbro decided not only to make a toy of it, but to also commission of comics about the toys they were making to include in the packaging. And so we got this amazing comic book both written and illustrated by Nick Roche. I wish Nick Roche would write more. Hell, I wish he would draw more. .... while he writes. He also both wrote and drewSpotlight: Kup, which is another fantastic Transformers story, easily one of the best. The connect between what the story wants to do and what it actually does is strong. Not an inch is wasted.

You might roll your eyes at a "Spotlight: Megatron" issue because, yeah, oh boy, FINALLY, there's gonna be a focus on Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, ABOUT TIME, but the comic book lives up to and exceeds your expectations. We see Megatron returning to life in a new body amidst his crumbling army, and we see how we begins to build that army back up again. He has a way of things, a formula, and center to that formula is Starscream. However, Starscream's as much in shambles as the rest of the Decepticons, and so Megatron literally spends the issue beating Starscream back into his usual self again. And Jesus God, is it slashy, and not in a kind way. By issue's end, you have a perfect idea of how Megatron's brain works. It's brutal, but amazingly executed.

ANYWAY NOW I CARE A BUNCH ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR MEGATRON BODY I GUESS. Thanks, comic. Stupid excellent storytelling.

Stealth Megatron is a Deluxe. This means he's on the small size for towering over much of your collection as he should, but there's a Starscream who's arriving on pegs at the same time who is just about the right size relative to him. Legends Starscream is also an IDW comics design, but a discarded one that was never used for Starscream himself (just Thundercracker). Also, this Starscream comes with a tiny Waspinator partner/weapon. I'm just piling on the reasons to own these things, aren't I. And so I've been having my Deluxe Megatron smack my Legends Starscream around my desk since Megatron arrived in the mail. They're a good pair.

Despite Stealth Megatron's Deluxeness, he's pretty meaty. His arms have a great mass to them, and he just looks like this intimidating chunk of dude who could mess you up... so long as you don't put him next to anybody else in his size class. He transforms by bunching up into this pentagon-shaped thing, and then you tear his arm cannon in half and plug them into the ends for wings. It's a little complicated and messy the first time you try it, but on the second tries and beyond it gets pretty simple. The learning curve is fairly short.

And of course the comic book comes with it. If you don't own the comic book, pick up the toy just to read it, dammit. (Or here it is on Comixology.)

Man, I still have a huge-ass backlog of toys from BotCon and SDCC which I haven't talked about. I remember when weekend updates were unlocked during the Dumbing of Age Kickstarter, and folks worried I wouldn't have time left to do comics. Oh, I'll have time to do comics! Just... other non-comic things fall through the cracks, is all. Like toy reviews. And so let's try to put a dent in this backlog.

One thing I really really need to talk about is this customized BWX Megatron. Cheetimus painted one up to look like Transmetal Megatron, which is basically the one thing this universe is sorely missing. And I know I talk a big game about Dinobot and Ratchet and Hot Shot, but I assure you that Beast Wars Megatron is, in fact, my favorite Transformers character of all time. And that his Transmetal form is my favorite iteration of him, though I think I like his BWX toy the best.

So obviously, the BWX toy painted up in is Transmetal colors just might be the best thing possible.

Part of me wanted to just drop that blog post title bomb, throw these photos at you, and then back away slowly before running away in shame. But no, I guess I'll actually, like, do my job and talk about these guys a little.

Man, Megatron Origin. There was a point in time in IDW's recent history where the powers that be were like, "hey, would anybody care if we ignored this?" Megatron Origin is one of those. For a long while it was this isolated piece of weirdness buried deep in the IDW continuity's past. I'm not sure where it went wrong, whether it was the story, the art, the coloring, or a perfect storm combination of all three. It was really hard to tell what was going on in that miniseries, artwise, and when you got through the gray art down to the story, maybe it was for the best?

Artwise, though, those folks have gone on to do some really awesome things very well. Alex Milne is now the the very readable penciler of More Than Meets The Eye, and Josh Perez is now the very readable colorist for Robots in Disguise. Those two are now seriously among my favorite creative people. Eric Holmes hasn't written anything Transformers since, so who knows if today he'd likewise be amazing.

So I'm just gonna blame Megatron Origin, the entity. Maybe it was cursed. The story was repurposed from an abandoned Dreamwave idea, so maybe reanimating the story for IDW was akin to building over sacred burial ground, with like Pat Lee ghosts seeping up into the story's foundation and haunting the shit out of it and also probably not paying anyone. Either way, I believe we shouldn't let its memories soil the talented people involved.

Regardless, here are these two Megatron Origin toys. The first is a retool of Generations Scourge with a new head as Senator Ratbat. It's a Japanese release, so I'll forgive it for not having a "REPUBLIC SENATOR!!!" call-out starburst on the front of the packaging. In Megatron Origin, Ratbat was a pre-war Senator with like a real humanoid body and everything, and he wore a bat-head-shaped helmet on his head. And then at the end SPOILERS Soundwave extracts his spark and shoves it into this tiny bat Recordicon body and there you go. This toy does its best to replicate that first body by translating Senator Ratbat's color scheme onto Generations Scourge's toy. It does a pretty good job. Like the other Japanese Generations toys, he's in shiny plastic and shiny paint. This would visually clash with my other Generations toys in usual circumstances, but this is a Senator, so I'll let him be exceptionally shiny.

The tiny Megatron is an entirely new Legends Class toy of Megatron in his original miner body, when he was a revolutionary for social reform before he got a taste for violence that drove him evil. And so he's got the hazard stripes painted on him that he and his fellow miners had. He's a pretty amazing Legion Class toy, considering some of the others! His turret can rotate all the way around, and his head turns. Both of those are kind of crazy for a toy his size. He transforms from robot to tank by folding his arms in front of him to form the turret and then opening up his legs so they can fit around the rest of him to form a shell.

He also comes with a tiny Chop Shop, but I don't know where he is now. I need to clean up the office.

Megatron is available in American stores now. Ratbat is available in Japanese stores as of a few months ago.